"I think what [Obama] had to say was not in particular shocking or strange, but I think the concern here is not so much what the President is going to say in the speech, but whether he hands the ball off to Congress, and if we get back into those 'us and them' controversies that we saw as the crisis was deepening," said Cashin.

"It would be best to work together rather than make Wall Street the whipping boy for what was going on. A lot of those people are out of the way now. I think we want to do something constructive—the economy needs it, the nation needs it," he said.